Articles

Ralph Berrier on war, music and memoir: "it fell to me to do it"

We talked this week with Ralph Berrier Jr., Roanoke Times reporter and author of “If Trouble Don't Kill Me.” Recounting 1930s country music history and battles on three continents during…
October 14, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re watching: used car sales’ Big Vinny, artists living in uncertain times, and the true price of a dowry

Great visuals can inspire storytellers, even when they’re employed for other ends. Below are a collection of beautiful photos and video used in intriguing ways to evoke a way of…
October 12, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Nobel Prize site offers multimedia smorgasbord; winner Mario Vargas Llosa shows fidelity to print newspapers

Nobel Prize site offers multimedia smorgasbord; winner Mario Vargas Llosa shows fidelity to print newspapers

Photo: Daniele DevotiThe Nobel Prize website has gone cutting edge, or at least modern. Visitors can, for instance, watch Nobel webcasts on a YouTube channel or Tweet greetings to the…
October 7, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

After the Wall: the strange story of German reunification

Narrative journalism can provide a window into distant communities or a link to people you might pass without noticing in daily life, but it also lets readers be flies on…
October 6, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
What's the buzz? Monkeying with story in the hive mind

What’s the buzz? Monkeying with story in the hive mind

We have to start with the monkeys. The infinite number of monkeys that, given their own personal typewriters and an infinite amount of time, would produce the works of William…
October 4, 2010
Peggy Nelson

Move over Lady Gaga; meet Ron Charles (a.k.a. the Totally Hip Video Book Reviewer)

Has book publishing found its savior? Well, probably not, but in August, The Washington Post's Ron Charles made his small-screen debut in the role of a cranky, self-important book reviewer.…
October 1, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re reading, in which we contemplate a hit-and-run fatality, the death of Glenn Beck’s mother and the declining lethality of quicksand

One of the things about stories is that for them to be interesting, something usually goes wrong. As a result, a large number of the articles, profiles and essays we…
September 30, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Michael Jones on heroes, villains and the science of narrative

Michael Jones on heroes, villains and the science of narrative

We spoke last week with Michael D. Jones, who is applying statistics to narrative here at Harvard during his fellowship at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Jones, who…
September 28, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument

What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument

Perhaps it’s just the nippy fall weather descending, but we have a multiplicity of crowdsourced, interactive and on-the-horizon projects. So, depending on your constitution, here are some nuggets of future-of-journalism…
September 24, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
GQ's "An Army of One": The war on terror finds its own Don Quixote

GQ’s "An Army of One": The war on terror finds its own Don Quixote

Though literary nonfiction takes its cues from literary fiction, William Faulkner would struggle to invent a more extreme character than his (possibly inadvertent) namesake Gary Faulkner, the subject of “An…
September 22, 2010
Andrea Pitzer